st shot: 'In a year from now I'm
going to put the same offer to you, and when I do I'll carry a few more
guns.'

"I went out and I got to work. As a matter of fact, I had already begun.
I went in with Majendie of the Atlantic Trust, Ryerson of the Columbian,
and Dryser of the Seaboard Trust. I bought my way in. I'd got a say in
institutions able to lend millions on good collateral without having to
duck at a bell pressed downtown. Then I started with a group of
Middle-Westerners to make myself felt. There was only one big field left
and it was a question how long that would be left alone. They had
organized their steel industries and their railroads, they'd knocked out
or digested competitors, controlled the field of production and had
things sailing along gloriously, but they'd forgotten, or almost
forgotten, one thing which they ought to have controlled the first, the
iron to pour into their furnaces and the coke to keep them going. When
they woke up, they found me in control of the Eastern Coke and Iron
Company, holding about eighty million dollars worth of land in West
Virginia and Virginia which they had to have sooner or later. Then they
woke up with a vengeance. The first thing they did was to send word to
me through Haggerdy to get out of the Seaboard Trust and be a good
little boy and they'd let me come around and play. I laughed at that,
though I knew it meant war to the knife. About ten weeks ago I got a
taste of what they could do. Of course, to carry what I was carrying, I
had need of big sums, and I had large blocks of Eastern Coke and Iron
hypothecated not only among my Trust Company connections, but in banks
around town, where it was upon good strong margins. Ten weeks ago, when
I dropped in at a certain bank to renew my loan, I was told that they
had decided on account of the business outlook, the downward trend of
prices and what not, to call in their loans and proceed on a very
conservative basis. Of course, under that rigamarole I knew what was
doing--orders from headquarters--and more to follow. I placed the loan
with the Atlantic Trust and waited. Last week another refusal. This time
the warning was a little more pointed. The president himself looked with
grave concern--that's always the expression--on the amount of Eastern
C. and I. stock hypothecated at present. A collapse in the stock, which
had been declining steadily, might seriously upset financial conditions
all over the country, etc. Well,